[quote=aferlazzo;597633]It is a weight that you attach to your rode to make the rode pull on your anchor more in the horizontal plane to reduce the risk of your anchor dragging. You can make one up by attaching a weight of say 20 pounds to some kind of roller that goes over your rode, and then attach a pennant to the roller so you can control where the kellet is on the rode from your boat.

Some swear by them, others think they are an unnecessary nuisance. I think if you have an all chain rode, they are much less helpful, but I can see that they could work very well if you use a rode that is primarily rope.

on edit: is anyone else surprised that the author of the OP's quoted article did not mention among her lessons learned that it was a mistake to rely solely on GPS (with her bad waypoints) for navigation? Wouldn't she have avoided her mistake in navigation (which eventually caused her to enter the anchorage location after dark which in turn caused her to anchor in a suboptimal location) by simply looking at a chart?[/quote]

I'm new to all of this and am reading lots of threads so I can learn as much as possible about sailing. See, this was good for me to read...because I'm thinking, wasn't she just panic stricken enough to forget the most logical thing? Seems like that's a common thing to do. But I'm so glad you put it out there, because now I know you have another option. That was one horrendous ordeal. I imagine sailors go through that though, from time to time. It can't all be smooth sailing, or can it?